


And If Thou Wilt, Remember

by PersephoneTree



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coping, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Post-Episode: s03e11 Going Home, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneTree/pseuds/PersephoneTree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When I am dead, my dearest / Sing no sad songs for me." Back in the Enchanted Forest, Baelfire and Belle grieve, separately and together.</p><p>(Set immediately after the events of "Going Home.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	And If Thou Wilt, Remember

**Author's Note:**

> When I am dead, my dearest,  
> Sing no sad songs for me;  
> Plant thou no roses at my head,  
> Nor shady cypress tree:  
> Be the green grass above me  
> With showers and dewdrops wet;  
> And if thou wilt, remember,  
> And if thou wilt, forget.
> 
> I shall not see the shadows,  
> I shall not feel the rain;  
> I shall not hear the nightingale  
> Sing on, as if in pain;  
> And dreaming through the twilight  
> That doth not rise nor set,  
> Haply I may remember,  
> And haply may forget.
> 
> -Christina Rossetti, "Song"

            It seemed a natural thing, like seasons changing. After the purple smoke cleared, they had drifted away from the despondent little group and fallen into step, walking side by side without touching. Neither asks where the other is walking to. They both know they are bound for the same place.

            The castle is a shambles, just as Baelfire last saw it. There is no sign of Robin and his men. Who knows how much time has passed, and in what direction, since the last time they were here. Bae is silently relieved by their absence; it means he will not have to explain.

            By some tacit agreement they stop in the great hall. Belle surveys the mess with red-rimmed eyes, runs a hand across the dining table’s surface. Grime collects on her fingertips, grey and clinging. Bae can see dust motes floating in the sunbeams that spill through the open windows.

            They stand there, the two of them, one lost in memory, the other in regret. After a time has passed, Belle bends to tear a strip of fabric from a fallen curtain, breaking the stillness with the sound of rending cloth. Then she begins, wordlessly, to dust.

 

 

            Belle has not seen Baelfire in days. She is not sure how many days; she has not been counting. She has been cleaning.

            It is no small task, not with the state of things now. She has done the best she can with the first floor, although the heavier pieces of furniture gave her some trouble. A second pair of hands would have been welcome, but Baelfire has vanished into the depths of the castle and she does not have the strength to seek him out.

            Her old room is too full of cruel words and bad memories, so instead she sleeps on a makeshift cot in a corner of the great hall. Only good memories in there. Well, mostly good. Some nights as she is falling asleep, she can almost hear his laughter. Once she thinks she smells roses, and her dreams that night are dark and bittersweet.

            She worries about Baelfire, when she remembers to. She at least has ventured outside for berries and roots – her reading has afforded her knowledge of many things, not least which plants are poisonous and which are food – but Baelfire has not left the castle since they arrived. She sleeps in the great hall, she would know if he had.

            He must be so hungry.

            Finally she gathers her courage and some wild blackberries in a basket, and goes looking in the one place she knows he has been all along. The stairs creak beneath her feet as she climbs. The tower room is just as dusty as the floor below had been, but at least here everything is in its rightful place: the books on their shelves, the work-table, everything. There have been no intruders here save one.

            Baelfire sits at the spinning wheel, one foot on the pedal. He does not look up as she clears the final step. His face is a mask of concentration, lower lip caught between his teeth. In his chafed fingers, a wisp of wool twists and thins until it joins seamlessly with the new-made thread.

            Besides him, a dozen skeins of freshly-spun yarn lie discarded on the floor.

 

 

            Bae can see how simple it must have been for his father to fall in love with Belle. She has a calm about her, a deep and abiding serenity underscoring her soft beauty, like a water-lily on a still, dark lake. He himself finds her presence soothing, even when she is elsewhere in the castle, can sense her influence in the neatness of the rooms and the kettle brewing on the fire.

            There is a strength in her, too, that he envies. She was the one who broke down that day, who sobbed and cried out in grief, while he stood tall and stoic and did not shed a tear. But he has come to realize that she is by far the stronger of them; he would be truly lost, now, but for her perseverance.

            She coaxed him down from the tower with fruit and nuts and easy conversation, and now that his hands have healed she keeps him grounded daily with little tasks: fetching firewood, fixing a broken window, tending the garden she has started in a nearby glade. Bae is amazed when she first shows it to him, the neat rows of earth, some with seedling plants already peeking through, and she beams and blushes under his praise.

            They talk often, now, because silence leaves too much room for memory to creep in. Bae has enough of memory when he dreams, and is glad to see that Belle seems to feel the same. Instead they discuss the weather, the garden, the chores still to be done. In the evenings they read aloud to one another, passing the books back and forth between them, one chapter in Belle’s voice, one in his.

            One evening, listening to her read, Bae happens to glance up and there, sitting in a chair at the long table, is his father. He wears the rags and tatters of Bae’s youth, but his face is older, more lined, more weary. He is watching them both with a fond half-smile, eyes dark and glistening in the firelight.

            Bae’s throat goes dry. He blinks, hard, hoping against hope, but when he opens his eyes again the chair is empty, and the only other thing in the room is Belle’s voice in his ears.

 

 

            They are harvesting the lettuces when Baelfire finally asks her hoarsely, “What was he like?”

            Belle looks up from her row, hands still buried in the cool soil. Bae is looking away from her, towards the castle, so she cannot see his face. He clears his throat, and when he speaks again his voice is stronger, surer. “When you lived here, with him. What was he like?”

            “I…” Her fingers clench of their own accord, dirt filling the crescents under her nails. They have not spoken of him at all, though she thinks about him each day with less and less pain. Giving those thoughts voice is something else entirely, it seems. They stick in her throat, a scabbed-over wound that she is afraid to open.

            “If you don’t want to…” Bae begins, but he is looking at her now and the closed-off look in his eyes is her saving grace. She spent too long chasing that look away after the tower and the spinning wheel; she won’t let it come back now.

            “No, it’s all right. He was…” She hesitates, thinking back. “He was funny.”

            “Funny?”

            “He made me laugh. And he was, well… not kind, really, but… thoughtful. Sometimes.” Belle giggles, struggling with the absurdity of trying to put Rumplestiltskin into words. “He tried to do things he thought I’d approve of. He liked making me happy, even if he never admitted it.”

            Bae smiles at that, but Belle can tell it’s not what he needs to hear. She breathes in the crisp spring air and meets his eyes, so like his father’s.

            “And he loved you,” she says gently. “He really did. He thought about you all the time. He lit a candle every year on your birthday. Sometimes I’d catch him staring off at nothing, and I’d know he was dreaming about finding you. About making things right.”

            Bae’s breath catches in his throat, ragged and sharp, and his chin drops to his chest. “He did,” he mumbles, and Belle can hear the tears in his voice, held back for so long. “He did, in the end. I wish I could’ve told him that, I wish I could’ve said—”

            She catches him as he topples forward, arms circling his shoulders as they begin to shake, and she rocks him as he cries. “He knows,” she whispers, as her own tears begin to flow. “He knows.”


End file.
